One tech lesson learned during COVID-19 school building closures: putting a statewide learning management system in place could be a powerful first step toward solving massive tech equity challenges, especially in rural states.
Take Idaho, for example. The state education department there has started a search for a learning management system it can offer next school year as an option for all schools in the state, many of which currently lack the tools they need to offer robust remote instruction.
Several states, meanwhile, already offer a state-sanctioned LMS option to their schools, with some encouraging results in their efforts to cut costs and improve technical capabilities.
Extended school shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic have upended traditional instruction and forced many school districts to confront prior technological shortcomings. The economic downturn caused by nationwide stay-at-home orders could lead to devastating cuts for school budgets.
The pandemic has highlighted challenges schools must confront and overcome to successfully deliver instruction to students at a distance. In Idaho, some of the biggest challenges are keeping families informed and students on track.
鈥淲e came to recognize that we need a systematic way to communicate with our students and our parents,鈥� said Sherri Ybarra, Idaho鈥檚 superintendent for public instruction. 鈥淲e鈥檝e also heard from many parents concerned that their children are not seeing the same access or the same opportunities enjoyed by their peers.鈥�
Ybarra wants schools to prepare for offering a hybrid of in-person and remote instruction next school year. She expects parents will have higher expectations than they did this spring. 鈥淭he main critical piece is knowing we can deploy content and curriculum and have a systematic way of interacting with our students should we have to be exposed to another set of closures,鈥� Ybarra said.
Ybarra鈥檚 team is currently collecting information on districts鈥� needs and plans to issue a request for proposals (RFP) for a new LMS within a month and a half. The goal is to have an option ready for schools to adopt in time for next school year.
Learning management systems provide schools with a centralized platform for teachers to upload assignments, post grades, and communicate with students. Educators across the country differ widely in how much they use LMS platforms like Canvas, Moodle, Schoology, and Blackboard, if their school has one at all. Other schools prefer more bare-bones but user-friendly tools like Google Classroom.
How It鈥檚 Working Elsewhere
In 2016, a virtual learning task force at the Wyoming Department of Education found that some schools in the state were spending more than $25 per student for a learning management system, while other schools didn鈥檛 have one at all. The state鈥檚 higher education institutions happened to be on a similar LMS search at the time, paving the way for a statewide K-20 solution, said Laurel Ballard, supervisor of the department鈥檚 student and teacher resources team.
Four years later, five of the seven Wyoming higher education institutions and roughly 30 of 48 school districts in the state have adopted the state agency鈥檚 Canvas LMS option, Ballard said. School districts pay the user licensing fees and the state covers the cost of training and customer support. A Canvas employee serves as an adoption consultant, helping the state鈥檚 schools transition to the new platform.
The rollout didn鈥檛 happen overnight. At first, only six districts had signed on. Even now, some schools use the LMS they鈥檝e adopted more consistently and robustly than others.
But the statewide contract, and the availability of a dedicated Canvas consultant, helped schools quickly launch new remote learning initiatives when COVID-19 shutdowns started, according to Ballard. 鈥淏ecause we already had a statewide piece in place, we were able to put that together for districts at the drop of a hat鈥� with three or four training sessions a day as well as drop-in office hours with the Canvas consultant, Ballard said.
Some districts that previously had one learning management system for middle and high school students and another for elementary school students told Ballard they now prefer having one LMS for the entire district. Students know what to expect from year to year, schools can more easily share courses, and the cost per student for an LMS in the state is now less than $4. Ballard estimates the state would save $250,000 a year if all Wyoming districts took the statewide option.
Only 30 certified staff members out of 180 in Wyoming鈥檚 Carbon County School District One were using Canvas as of this February, said Joshua Jerome, the district鈥檚 technology director. One week into the planning for COVID-19 closures, that number shot up to nearly all staff members. The statewide option hadn鈥檛 lured most teachers prior to the pandemic, but the urgency of sudden building closures change that fast.
鈥淚f we didn鈥檛 have this one direction to go, it would have been very difficult to provide the level of support and services that we鈥檝e been able to,鈥� Jerome said.
Wyoming isn鈥檛 alone. As of 2018, Utah鈥檚 legislature has for K-12 schools to use Canvas, with schools required to pay a one-time $2,500 licensing fee.
Jerome offers a sports analogy to explain the value of a statewide LMS option: 鈥淚f I was getting ready for a game, and the court size changed every other game, how would you deal with that?鈥� he said. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 have some sort of space that is equal for all students, obviously kids can still learn, but you don鈥檛 have conformity.鈥�
An Emergency Opportunity
In Vermont, a statewide LMS option came about as a direct result of the pandemic. The Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative, a state-funded agency, for years has offered online courses to schools in the state, filling in availability gaps and providing more flexibility for students.
Jeff Renard, the cooperative鈥檚 executive director, worked with state officials to offer the cooperative鈥檚 Canvas platform to all schools in the state, not just the ones taking advantage of specific courses developed for them. Teachers who were already certified to offer instruction virtually through the cooperative now lead training sessions for instructors with no online teaching experience.
鈥淵es it鈥檚 a statewide LMS, but the reality is it takes a lot of mentoring, professional learning, the content, the facilitation of those courses, and the ability to capture student data to effectively support students to be successful,鈥� Renard said.
Some schools have asked whether they can migrate content from their existing platform to Canvas so they can take advantage of the professional development opportunities. The answer is usually yes, but each system has a different migration protocol, Renard said.
Other states have taken different approaches. When the pandemic hit, Pennsylvania offered schools , Odysseyware and Edgenuity.
A Broader Picture
COVID-19 has accelerated a trend toward 鈥渃entralization鈥� of K-12 technical resources like the learning management system, said Phil Hill, an education technology consultant who tracks LMS adoptions in the K-12 and higher ed systems. 鈥淒istricts and states are saying, we can鈥檛 afford to let everybody do stuff on their own,鈥� Hill said.
A statewide option carries risks, though. An LMS company that woos top-level administrators with a robust sales pitch might not be as appealing to teachers who use the tools every day. Some teachers currently prefer Google Classroom, which is similar to LMS products but lacks data analytics capability and other more sophisticated features, Hill said.
New Mexico entered a contract with Desire2Learn (D2L) as a statewide LMS option for K-12 schools, but Hill鈥檚 data show that many schools adopted Canvas instead. 鈥淭here wasn鈥檛 a strong correlation between the state contract and what districts were actually using,鈥� he said.
States with majority rural populations, like Wyoming and Idaho, and/or small school districts might be more likely to find success with a statewide LMS option, Hill said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 going to be much more political pressure to have the states solve the problem鈥� of unequal access in areas where schools don鈥檛 have the resources for a full-fledged IT department that can launch an LMS adoption on its own, he said.
That鈥檚 certainly true in Idaho, where Ybarra wants to address technology access challenges for schools in rural areas. 鈥淲e want to make sure that those kids have the same opportunities as the districts who have a robust LMS,鈥� she said.